FLUXEUROPA: HERE & NOW MAGAZINE

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HERE & NOW

HERE & NOW is a libertarian/anarchist magazine heavily influenced by Situationism, the anarchist-related current which rose to prominence in the ideology and slogans of May '68, and which provided an acute critique of modern capitalist society: having been alienated from the product of his labour, man was now being seduced as the passive consumer of a commodity culture. Situationism was originally advanced by a very small but highly influential group of avant-garde artists and intellectuals including, most prominently, Guy Debord, author of The Society of the Spectacle (1967), who recently committed suicide. A detailed account of the Situationist International(s) is given by Stewart Home's The Assault on Culture: Utopian currents from Lettrisme to Class War (AK Press, Stirling, 1991).

Following its Situationist roots, Here & Now is largely concerned with the commodification of life that characterises advanced capitalist society. A key rationale of Here & Now's position was provided by 'Peter Porcupine' in 'Footnote' (issue 14, 1993, pp 60-61) in which he addressed the 'enclosure of the commons':

"It wasn't just the means of subsistence which were brought under more intense regulation but a profusion of independent activities and communal entities. Custom, which dispensed justice, set limits and sustained the community, became subject to increasing intervention form a burgeoning class of professional administrators."

It was also not just an isolated occurrence but an on-going process:

"Now body and soul are 'human resources' at the service of enterprises and the functions of both are required to submit to self-administered cost/benefit analysis. Life disintegrates into tasks and projects and it is professionalism which invigilates and measures them.

"The dream of socialists for a synchronicity between the economy and human needs looks like being fulfilled, except that it is humans who are being 'economised' rather than the economy being humanised.

"Only some of the opponents of capitalism are beginning to grasp what is going on. The Left remains gripped by alternative resource management, arguing for public rather than private enclosure, thereby bolstering up rather than dissolving the legitimacy of transforming commons into resources".

And it is the human environment created by this enclosure of the commons which attracts so much of Here & Now's criticism. In 'Heres@y' (issue 14, pp 4-5), John Barrett addresses the convergence of work and leisure:

"If more and more of life becomes indistinguishable from work...then how can life fight back against the homogensising effect of work, how can the cumulative amnesia which is progress be jolted from the path of escalating management and regulation?"

Here & Now's critique is not just of capitalism but of the new bureaucratic class. Although anti-capitalist, it fears not to criticise the vested interests of soft socialism - the academics, social workers and drug counsellors who have made a career out of extending their management of humanist concerns.

Here & Now costs £2.50 for 3 issues and is available from Here & Now, PO Box 109, Leeds LS5 3AA or c/o Transmission Gallery, 28 King St, Glasgow G1 5QP.

Dated: 3 November 1995